How the Internet is Ruining the World

Traditional transmission of information is more secure, better for learning and builds character.

Traditional production of manuscripts have a permanence recent advancements in technology could never replicate.

The infatuation with technology will surpass the love and respect for the communication.

I’m sure you’ve heard these. Maybe you’ve thought, said or posted on social media about them.

But these statements are much older than the internet. In fact, these are claims made about how mass production using the printing press would doom culture, intellectualism, and even our souls.

But the benefits that arose from the proliferation of printed materials has brought us commerce, education, medical advancements. Pretty much everything about your life. Even what you believe about God, since you can read for yourself due to the explosion of literacy following the printing press.

In the beginning (after the printing press), anyone could put anything they wanted on paper and mass distribute it. Few people followed the rules…mostly because there weren’t a defined set of rules provided to the previously illiterate.

Here’s what I propose. The internet is a force for change. Not a good one or a bad one, necessarily. Just change.

Change is scary. There are new rules and, for a while, no one really knows what they are. We make them up as we go.

And we don’t know where this change is going. I’ve told my children as soon as they know how to write, they can make money writing on the internet, because no one knows they are children. And their merit will be based on their ability. They can literally make global change, because no one will disregard them due to the pitch of their voice, size of their body or dependence on their parents.

My family is incredibly privileged, simply because we are white, middle class, and encouraged to be college educated and professionally successful. These benefits mean even more for those who have been overlooked and disregarded by society based on skin color, religion, gender, weight or beauty to name a few.

And that is what makes it worth it to me. The printing press took power from the elite and religious authority simply by providing literacy and means for communication to the remaining 99%. Sound familiar?

Change is what you make of it. So I encourage you, instead of fighting the change, help direct it.